Since the beginning of shale development and production therefrom, drilling and completing as many wells as possible in the least time has been and continues to be an important focus of optimization. Time and cost are easy to measure and the industry has made enormous strides in reducing both days and cost-per-foot for a completed well. In shale basins, this efficiency may be reaching a limit with existing practices, and operators are spending more effort on improving the production response by optimizing the completion process.
There are many different types of completion. One type is referred to as perforate-and-plug. In this type of completion, a set of clusters are perforated, usually following a geometrical distribution, and treated with a technique of hydraulic fracturing simultaneously. Regarding optimized completion processes, there has been a focus on increasing the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV), increasing the complexity of the fracturing created network, etc. However, a primary issue that affects a production response is a lack of having the entire lateral stimulated, that is, not all sections that are perforated end up producing. Accordingly, during completion, there may be a percentage of the clusters that do not produce or may suffer from reduced production.